A Visit To Temple Newsam House, Near Leeds

Another day out with my support worker.

It all  started with the saga of the two hand-written notices. The first one was on the parking ticket machine at the car park. I followed the instructions as best as I could, but after a dozen failed attempts my finger was sore and so I gave up and we returned to the car and placed our own hand-written notice on the dashboard....I don't think anyone paid to park there today though.

I soon noticed that Temple Newsam House isn't the prettiest stately home as you approach it, but once inside it turned out to be one of my favourites to visit so far.

I've never seen so many beautiful paintings and items of furniture in one property. It's a large house, and there are a lot of stairs and I think Siobhan, my support worker, was quite tired after exploring the building. There was only one thing that I didn't like, some garish modern paintings by Grayson Perry hung on some of the walls; neither of us liked them and we told one of the volunteers who worked there that they were inappropriate and intrusive...she said that many more people had also gone out of their way to make the same point.

Next up we walked over to the stable block and had a pot of tea in the café, and then explored the courtyard.

There's also a farm at Temple Newsam that's fully accessible to the public. It's quite extensive and includes a couple of dozen buildings housing livestock, or displays and exhibits, and a large area of enclosed paddocks with a winding path allowing access to many areas to view the animals. 

After leaving the farm we would have spent an hour or two walking around the grounds of the estate but by now it had started to rain and turned quite cold, so we decided to stop off at Selby on our way home; a pleasant market town with an impressive abbey.

We had time for a pot of tea and toasted teacakes...and a quick look round the charity shops.